Baby names: Emily’s reign of terror is finally over

The Social Security Administration released its list of most popular baby names this morning. I’m never sure why it takes our government more than 125 days to compile these statistics every year — I was kind of hoping that this would be one of those things that Obama would fix. (More on him later.)

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Dethroned by Emma, of all people.

But whatever, this is a day filled with good news. After holding the top position since 1995, Emily has fallen to No. 3 on the list of girls names behind Emma and Isabella.

This isn’t a knock on people who named their kids Emily. (And apparently, that’s about half of you.) I actually like the name a lot, which is why I want it to fade into relative obscurity again. Good names are kind of like excellent fishing holes and Thai food restaurants — they face the potential of being ruined when everyone finds out. Sophia, still very popular at No. 7, is another quality name that I hate seeing overused. I’ll only be happy when bad and/or boring names are dominating the Top 10.

The top boys names are Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua and Daniel, in that order. I always like to check out where my sons’ names are on the list, to make sure they’re not trending too far downward. Theo is still hovering in the 300 range. Milo is becoming more popular each year, but still a long way from trendy at 449. If either one enters the Top 20 during their childhood, we’ll definitely consider a name change.

One piece of bad news for Kardashian-haters. The name Khloe jumped nearly 500 spots to No. 196. Meanwhile, Barack didn’t make the list, but the SSA reports that it jumped by more than 10,000 spots from 12,535 to 2,409, which is still more than 2,200 places behind George.